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Travel alert

I'm traveling this week. Florida beckons, hurricanes notwithstanding. I'll be back on the blog in a few days and will be writing from Florida until August.

President gets big air

Since I work in the so-called Southern Tier of New York state, I would genuinely like to see the area benefit from business growth.¹ I'm not convinced that the new project now opening in Owego, west of Binghamton, will do the trick. Today Sen Hillary Rodham Clinton and Gov George Pataki made their usual photo presentations at the ribbon-cutting ceremony today at Lockheed Martin's $37.4 million "presidential helicopter" facility in the village of Owego. This was a project that's been on the drawing board since 2002, when Lockheed Martin was contracted to design a modern replacement for the Presidential helicopter fleet.² Not only does the president get to ride around in a fleet of SUVs and a fleet of jet aircraft, but he also has to have a new fleet of helicopters. This new fleet, procured by Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), will modernize the existing Marine One VH-3D Sea King helicopters with a modern platform via a reconfigured US101 medium-lift helicopter (with large stand-up cabin, quiet, low-vibration ride, and three powerful engines) specifically for presidential use. The project is called VXX. Lockheed Martin's $1.7 billion contract will include hiring 800 workers for its $25 million facility at the Owego plant. The Lockheed contract calls for the production of 23 operational aircraft and three test aircraft.³

I'm encouraged that the American economy is doing so well that we can afford to spend tax dollars on a new fleet of helicopters for the president to fly around in. But, hey, gasoline is free. I think this is an example of the military-industrial complex spreading itself around the US, making itself indispensable to communities that desperately need business growth and which are not unwilling to accept projects that suck money from socially responsible enterprises for what might mend our prospects, but does not otherwise fill our barns.⁴ When the plant closes, I expect there will be the usual gnashing of teeth, loud weeping, and vociferous complaints about the inability of this corporation to take care of its stakeholders.

1.  The geographical area of the Southern Tier incorporates the eight contiguous counties west of the Catskill Mountains along the northern Pennsylvania border.
2.  See news release, "Lockheed Martin Details Design For Next Presidential Helicopter," at Lockheed Martin, June 26, 2003.
3.  "Clinton, Pataki attend ribbon cutting for helicopter facility," AP, Newsday, June 12, 2006. See also "Lockheed Martin to open Marine One helicopter facility," AP, Boston Globe, June 9, 2006.
4.  I am borrowing from Francis Bacon here.

Related Tags: Lockheed Martin, presidential helicopter, Owego, Southern Tier, US101, VXX

Oops, I changed the name of this town

With some apologies to Tom Petty,¹ I think it's safe to suppose that Licia Kuenning's Farmington prophecy is now just another of history's heresies and she has therefore been enrolled in the old order of false prophets. According to a Farmington, Maine, news source:

One would think that she is more than just disappointed. At the root of the problem here is perhaps Licia's refusal to "test" her prophecy, suggesting a kind of spiritual arrogance.² As a consequence, she now joins many other false prophets who believed their own visions, too. Germantown, Pennsylvania, was settled by followers of mystic Jacob Zimmerman, who believed that the millennium would arrive in 1694. That didn't happen, despite the conviction and sincerity of the (false) prophet's visions. And let's not forget Vermont farmer William Miller who convinced followers that the second advent of Christ would occur in 1844. Jehovah's Witnesses were disappointed not once, but many times, as they prophetically anticipated that all members of the body of Christ would be changed to heavenly glory in 1917, 1918, 1925—well, until they finally quit fixing the dates of these (false) prophecies. On March 26, 1997, cult leader Marshall Applewhite and 39 members of Heaven's Gate committed suicide with the expectation that they would be evolved into higher beings as they hitched a ride on a UFO hiding on the other side of the Hale-Bopp comet. Another false prophecy, this one with lethal consequences. Deanna Laney, the Texas woman who murdered her two boys by crushing their heads with large rocks, also hideously maiming her 14-month-old son, believed that God commanded her to kill her children as proof of her faith in him. How many more need to be considered here? James Nayler, Mother Ann Lee and her United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Coming (Shakers), L. Ron Hubbard's Church of Scientology?³

How far into the past ought we to go with this? History is littered with convictions that have sprung entirely from human imaginations. Christians have been warned to judge prophecies and weigh them carefully [1 Cor 14:29] and to "Test everything" [1 Thess 5:21]. Jesus cautioned us that "many false prophets will appear and deceive many people" [Matt 24:11]. Satan is the great deceiver. The Old Testament gives a fuller declaration of the false prophet and the responsibilities of the community upon receiving the deception (see especially Deuteronomy 13:1-5 and 18:15-22).

When we have the privilege of the Holy Spirit, we are not without paths for discerning the true from the false leading. Friends have used a five-fold test for spiritual leadings. However, when we indulge ourselves in prophetic visions totally apart from the community of believers, we end up with our own peculiar religion. Ask George W. Bush, who too believes that religion is a "personal and private matter."⁴ This is what enables the easy mystic to please himself with private sessions with a god who would command him to invade Iraq, with more deadly consequences.⁵

1.  Change the Locks, by Tom Petty.
2.  See her comments over at Noli Irritare Leones, where she is put upon by the suggestion that she "test" her prophecy.
3.  There is some resemblance between Licia's statement about the genesis of her fictional expression of the Farmington prophecy (in Farmington! Farmington!) and Neale Walsch's Conversations with God (Putnam, 1996). Both claim that they wrote their works by a kind of amanuensis; both end up with an abomination.
4.  "Religion Plays Big Role in Bush Presidency," ABC News, May 21, 2001.
5.  "God told me to invade Iraq, Bush tells Palestinian ministers," BBC, June 10, 2005. See also "Bush: God told me to invade Iraq," The Independent, October 7, 2005; this article is archived at Common Dreams News Center.

Related Tags: Farmington prophecy, Kuenning, Maine, Quaker